560 
JAMES LAW. 
GLANDERS AND ITS MORTALITY. 
By James Law, M. R. C. V. S., Ithaca, N. Y. 
A Paper read before the New York State Veterinary Medicine Society, Sept. 14-15, 1898 
At the Buffalo meeting of this society I rather shocked 
some members by saying that recoveries from glanders were 
not uncommon in America, and that when we reached the clear 
dry air of the Plains and Rocky Mountains, and under a con¬ 
tinuous outdoor life, recovery might rather be said to be the rule 
than the exception. One member was,so astounded at such a 
statement that he expressed the hope that it should not be al¬ 
lowed to get into print. 
Last November a somewhat similar reception was given to 
the same statement from Nocard, in Moscow, and when by 
mistranslation in the English journals he was made to claim 
cures instead of recoveries, the outcry was not a little amusing. 
But in these days of bacteriological demonstrations and of 
mallein and tuberculin tests, preconceived ideas are made to give 
way and long cherished doctrines have to be set aside. The 
acceptance of the new truth does not always make our course 
ye easier nor the more pleasant, though it does give the com- 
_ fortiiig conviction that our knowledge is founded on aLuiider 
and more substantial basis. It is not pleasant to have an im¬ 
portant and influential layman, interested in one’s sanitary 
woy, and anxious to support it, say of one of the familiar ani¬ 
mal plagues (glanders, tuberculosis, lung plague), “but the 
animal never recovers.” Anxious as he is to give your work an 
unassailable ground, his question virtually implies that if there is 
a chance of recovery, the slaughter for sanitary reasons is a ques¬ 
tionable procedure. One feels himself at a disadvantage in 
laving to enter on an explanation of the economic and moral 
reasons for making a speedy end of an infection-factory, on the 
simple ground of the advantage to others. But when truth is 
involved we must not hesitate to hold that supreme, and when 
we must carry out unpalatable work, we must place it on a 
foundation which will stand the rays of the sun. 
